July 31, 2007, Lisle, IL, USA - Woodhead Industries announces the availability of version 1.4 of the BradCommunications applicom GATEway.The applicom GATEway is a configurable stand-alone intelligent gateway that allows plant-floor devices to communicate and to interoperate simultaneously with each other through Ethernet TCP/IP, Profibus, and Serial networks. The applicom GATEway is more than a standard tunneling gateway. It is the first hardware platform that allows communication between heterogeneous devices by offering up to 20 different protocols.
The applicom GATEway offers thousands of protocols combinations (including Master/Slave and Client/Server modes) in one box without any programming.
The version 1.4 introduces several new features including:
- Change Of State (COS) mechanism The new COS functionality enables the user to manage the “write access” send out to the network.
- Digital Input and Output channelsThis functionality allows to manage the 6 digital inputs and 2 digital outputs embedded on the applicom GATEway.
To trigger a write access, the user application has to write into a specific bit of the GATEway’s internal memory.
The advantage of COS is to reduce the traffic on this network by only activating write access based on user application decision.
An additional benefit of the COS functionality applies at the startup of the GATEway.
By default all the internal memory values are at 0.
With COS, the user application can first initialize the data associated to write access and then activate the function to produce the data on the network.
To help users implement COS in its application, a listing with each address of command bit can be generated.
The user can map the digital I/O status into a bit area of the internal memory.
The first 6 bits correspond to inputs and can only be access in read mode.
The 2 last bits correspond to outputs and can be accessed in read and write modes.
The inputs and outputs can be used to implement features like: emergency stop button, watchdog, redundancy, etc.
About Woodhead Industries, Inc. Woodhead Industries, a Division of Molex Incorporated, (NASDAQ: MOLX AND MOLXA), is a global developer, manufacturer and marketer of a wide array of Automation and Electrical products engineered for superior performance in demanding, harsh, or hazardous industrial environments.
Woodhead Industries "Empowers the Industrial Infrastructure" with innovative products and solutions that extend from mechanical, electrical and electronics, to communications/networking devices and diagnostic software.
Woodhead Industries' Brad lines of Automation products include such globally recognized names as applicom, Direct-Link, mPm, RJ-Lnxx and SST.
The Woodhead family of Electrical products includes globally recognized names such as Aero-Motive, Daniel Woodhead, Watertite and Super-Safeway.
Molex operates from 54 locations in 18 countries spanning North America, Europe and Asia/Pacific.
